When we began work on the Infovark user interface, we decided to base it on HTML and JavaScript. Both Gordon and I are very comfortable with web development, so it was a natural choice. We also felt this would give us the most flexibility to run on different platforms with different screen sizes. For better or worse, HTML and JavaScript have together become the lingua franca of interactive design.
Both have their drawbacks, of course. HTML and JavaScript have evolved over time. They each have quirks, particularly with regard to the Document Object Model (DOM). Fortunately there are a wide variety of JavaScript libraries that help programmers working with HTML and JavaScript.
After doing a little research, we settled on on JQuery. JQuery makes us love JavaScript again. It’s a simple, small library that works across all major browsers. It deals with all the inconsistencies that emerge from the last decade of tinkering with web standards. Most importantly, it helps us get things done.
Microsoft has decided that they love JQuery, too. John Resig, the progenitor of the JQuery project, announced in September that jQuery will be distributed with Visual Studio. Two prominent Microsoft bloggers, Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman, also discussed the news.
Momentum around the project continues to build. The JQuery blog just posted news about the JQuery 1.3 release and the JQuery Foundation. Most exciting of all (from our perspective as developers) is the release of revamped JQuery API documentation.
Congratulations to the JQuery team! It’s come a long way in three short years.
1 Comment
Gordon
Yep, I wholeheartedly agree. Congratulations to John and the JQuery team.
JQuery makes javascript sing, dance and come alive. And it does it with such elegance that Dean and I will frequently drag each other over to the IDE just to “look at this line of code!”
It’s also really refreshing to see Microsoft embracing what works, rather than trying to create their own “Redmond Special” version. I bet somewhere in Seattle somebody is still valiantly working on that project…
19 Jan 2009 12:01 am
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